Klarinet Archive - Posting 000125.txt from 2009/10

From: "Dan Leeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Lorenzo Coppola plays K. 622
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:21:14 -0400

Joe, I am grateful for the time that we have spent on this matter and I
doubt it there is much more to say about it. You have expressed yourself
clearly and it appears to me that continuing the discussion will not resolve
any issues on which we differ. And I very much appreciate our pleasant
discussion even if we do not agree.

But, I find only one thing that I want to say as we wind this matter down.

It appears to me that you consider a composition almost exclusively in terms
of the pitches of its notes. So when I said that K. 361 first edition had
800-900 changes in the placement or intensity of dynamic, you did not find
the quantification as important as the fact that only 50 or so notes were
incorrect.

From my point of view, a composition that has been altered in dynamics and
articulation patterns to such an extent represents something entirely
different from what the composer wrote, and it does not express his/her
intentions correctly, even if all the notes are at the correct pitch.

What we have in the discussion of the high G played by Coppola (and which I
think you favor, but which I do not because of the arguments I gave) is that
the register in which one plays the pitch has less importance to you than it
does to me. That high G has no precedent in any Mozart composition using a
clarinet, which disturbs me because I think the note is in the wrong
register, and it has no business being there. That it may be the correct
pitch intended is not enough to place the note in the register where Coppola
placed it.

And for anyone else who reads this note, I'm still tying to find out in what
orchestra is Coppola a member of the clarinet section?

Dan Leeson

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Wakeling" <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
To: <klarinet@-----.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 10, 2009 5:02 PM
Subject: Re: [kl] Lorenzo Coppola plays K. 622

> Dan Leeson wrote:
>> Joe,
>>
>> I don't think you really understand the process by which the first
>> edition of K. 622 was created. You envision some formal process done by
>> experts. Yeah!
>
> I don't assume that at all, and I don't think that anything I wrote
> relies on such an assumption.
>
>> Now having gone through that effort, how much of the original music do
>> you think is presented accurately to a bunch of performers?? Probably
>> not more than 50%.
>
> 50% of _what_, though? 50% of phrasing and articulation? 50% of
> dynamics? 50% of rhythms? Of pitches?
>
>> I can tell you what happened to the gran Partitta when the same set of
>> events took place. When the first edition was published in 1803, the
>> same year as the clarinet concerto, there were some 800-900 differences
>> in the placement and intensity of dynamics, perhaps 30 changes of
>> rhythm, some 60 wrong notes, and an uncountable number of alterations in
>> the slur and staccato patterns.
>
> The conclusion I draw from these statistics is that the _pitches_ of the
> Gran Partitta were transcribed with a high level of accuracy -- after
> all, there are frequently more than 60 notes per bar, and hundreds of
> bars in the piece. Rhythms are clearly transcribed with even greater
> accuracy. The errors are overwhelmingly located in notation of dynamics
> and phrasing.
>
> Now, that's one piece, but it seems likely that this pattern will be
> reproduced in the case of other works. So what it tells you is that
> when it comes to anticipated rates of error, they differ strongly
> depending on what aspect of the music is being considered. I could
> anticipate a virtually 100% rate of error with respect to phrasing in
> some pieces, but I'd find it unlikely that a piece of reasonable scale
> would have as much as a 5% rate of error in the pitches, let alone 50%!
>
>> That is the event as you have to think of it, not as some careful,
>> well-watched process. Now think about that in relation to your
>> questions.
>
> Well, my original question was simply what basis you had for your
> assertion that the high G in the finale was a '20th-century insertion'.
> And it clearly isn't -- as far as I know, it dates back to the earliest
> scores of the piece. So if it _is_ an editorial insertion, it's an 1803
> one (or maybe even earlier).
>
> I don't have any problem with the idea that the high G _might_ be an
> insertion. It's just that there is no documentary evidence to back up
> that hypothesis. The stylistic evidence you've presented (that Mozart
> never wrote such a high note for clarinet anywhere else) is interesting,
> but it's not proof.
>
> So, I would be happy to hear a performance without the high G -- it's a
> reasonable interpretational decision. But I think it's very
> _unreasonable_ to criticise someone for performing the work with that
> note in place.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> -- Joe
>
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>

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